British didn't lose Basra, it's just that success was based on "false expectations"

[ProSense]

British Defense Chief Sees Success in Southern Iraq

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 11, 2007; Page A13

LONDON, Oct. 10 -- The British military has "succeeded in the south of Iraq," but the public has not fully understood that because top government and military figures created "false expectations" of what troops could accomplish there, the head of the British military said Wednesday.

"We perhaps allowed people to get the sense that our presence there was going to restore Iraq to its former glory," Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup said in an interview.

Without blaming anyone specifically for the "misunderstanding," Stirrup said British leaders created the impression of Iraq that "we were going to leave it with a burgeoning economy, with prosperity spreading throughout the country, with everyone living quietly and tending their gardens and enjoying the cool of the evening after a good day's work."

Stirrup, who took over last year as chief of defense staff, Britain's top military officer, said the British military's main strategic objective has always been limited to establishing security in the Basra region and returning it to Iraqi control.

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Has the US Ceded Southern Iraq?

[jimshoes]

1. And any resemblance to a

clusterfuck is purely coincidental.